A Rat Invasion Discovered at Historic Los Angeles City Hall in the Middle of a Typhus Epidemic

LOS ANGELES – The first clue, Los Angeles City Council President Herb Wesson, claimed that rats were invading City hall, possibly carrying a potentially fatal disease,

"We had an employee or two who said they heard something on the ceiling," Wesson said Thursday while he went to his office, where all the carpets had been torn. "Then we had an employee who spotted what she thought was footprints."

After a flea hid in a carpet fell on one of his employees at the end of last year, Wesson had enough: he closed the office and had all the carpet.

Now, after learning that an employee at another City Hall office was infected with typhus at about the same time, he asked the city staff to Consider how much it would cost to remove all carpets over the next 91 years. Old building and its annex is East City Hall.

"When you go to work, the only thing that should worry you, is to arrive at the time," Wesson said. He wants both to remove the rugs and better fight against vermin. "You should not worry about coming to work and contracting a virus."

Health officials report that the city center is suffering from an epidemic of typhus. Many homeless people who live near the city hall live among the people affected. It blooms in unhealthy conditions and is often spread by infected fleas that pull rats. It is rarely fatal when it is treated quickly with antibiotics, but epidemics have killed thousands of people in the Middle Ages.

Wesson acknowledged that he had not seen any rat carrying fleas in his office, but that he had talked enough to the city hall for that. can doubt it. there are many there. Whatever the case may be, there was surely something to chew on his potted plants before he took them off on the advice of the exterminators.

"We had a beautiful orchid right here," he said pointing to an empty plant container.

City Hall officials, security guards and employees of several other council offices said Thursday that they had not seen rats either. But they do not doubt either of their presence.

"When we work late at the office, you sometimes hear something in the wall," said Mark Pampanin, representative of Councilor David Ryu, in charge of communication.

Wesson says that he does not know how much it would cost to replace all the carpets in the 27-storey building, some of which are decades old. But he does not plan to replace his at all.

He had the original concrete floor covered with polished and said he and his team loved the new retro look perfect for an iconic building.

The white art-deco structure played a leading role in classic films such as "Chinatown" and "LA Confidential", was the centerpiece of almost every roof made in decades and was presented in television shows from the 1950s, such as Billy's "The Adventures of Superman" Bob Thornton's current series "Goliath".

This story is one of the reasons why locals in Ryu's office said they removed their carpet after the city councilor took office in 2015, years before the start of the rat problem.

"This type of government standard carpet was not really our style," said Pampanin. "This building, is the living history of 100 years ago – and the soil is charming. And now, it seems that our aesthetics has also served us well in other respects. "